Ah, words that make me surfeit with delight:
What greater bliss can hap…
Than live and be the favourite of a king?
Sweet prince, I come! these, these, thy amorous lines,
Might have enforced me to have swum from France,
And, like Leander, gasp'd upon the sand,
So thou wouldst smile and take me in thy arms.

(Gaveston, Edward II)

Shakespeare and new fields

NO spy or part-time agent who risks life and limb, and who then
escapes from a dangerous, nerve-racking predicament is likely
to be full of self-recrimination for long. And nothing suggests
that Marlowe took pride in being a spy. His morale did not hinge on the
technical failure of his stay on a Dutch island. After all, he had not really
forfeited the Cecils' interest and protection. He had accustomed himself
to duplicity, or the deception required in overseas work, or he could not
have gone to Zeeland and survived. His nerve had not quite failed him,
and after some weeks in London his optimism and self-esteem probably
blotted out any sense of a lost chance. He was lucky to get back from
Flushing without the loss of his ears: he had suffered no punishment after
falling into the hands of the svelte, debonair, poetry-writing governor.

A dependency on secret work since his Cambridge days, though, had
its drawback: he could not be sure of its continuance, or if he would
ever be used again. No elegant, young, part-time spy had any such
assurance; and there may have been difficulty in informing employers of

Print this page

While we understand printed pages are helpful to our users, this limitation is necessary
to help protect our publishers' copyrighted material and prevent its unlawful distribution.
We are sorry for any inconvenience.